Take Two – Stillwater

By: Gladys Luna

A woman is at her living room watching TV. Suddenly, the walls and the floors start to shake and a load rumble can be heard. The woman starts calling out for somebody named Cooper (Nicholas Coombe). A young man shows up at the stairs and is immediately met with a shining light that has now covered the whole room. When he looks at the door a thin, tall figure can be seen standing there and all of a sudden the screen turns black.

Sam (Rachel Bilson) and Eddie (Eddie Cibrian) are on their way to Stillwater. The woman has received a call by a young guy saying that his mother has disappeared, and he wants them to help him find her. Sam has decided to hide some information about the case from Eddie as she believes he may not be interested. Once they arrive to the town, they are met by Sheriff Harry Bueller (Eric Keenleyside) who seems to be a little upset that they have come, alleging that they have the situation at under control and there´s no need for some outsiders help. The man leaves and then Cooper comes out of his house and explains what he believes it had happened to his mother, now identified as Kay Winston (Jillian Fargey). He lets them know what he saw the night before. Eddie tries to find a reasonable explanation for the circumstances, so he questions further about the situation. Cooper explains that his mother was diagnosed with MS, so her body started to go rigid and she needed to use a wheelchair and that he was the only one taking care of her. Eddie sees some divorce papers on the table and asks about it. Cooper lets them know that Kay got married to a man named Chuck (David Allan Pearson) who had been nice at first, but then his attitude towards them had changed and also started to drink a lot. The young man shows them a picture of the couple. In it there can be seen a big truck with a lot of headlights at the front, which serves as a logical explanation for the “bright lights” that Cooper saw. Eddie somehow believes that Chuck may have taken Kay, so he suggests paying a visit to the man.

In the meantime, Berto (Xavier de Guzman) meets Monica (Alice Lee) at the office and he lets her know about the case that Eddie and Sam are working on, but he doesn’t seem to convinced on the argument himself. Monica confirms the facts that Stillwater has been a town where some other abductions had happened before and when he looks at it he seems to be kind of scared at the news.

Back in Stillwater, Sam and Eddie visit Chuck and sees a trail of fresh blood leading to his shed. Right that moment the man shows up pointing a rifle at them and asking them to get away from his property. As they see the man won´t cooperate at all with them, they decide to wait outside the place until Chuck goes to sleep so they can check on the shed. Later, it´s 3am and the man finally decides to go to bed. Eddie and Sam get ready to get in the truck when some bright lights can be seen shining from inside the house.

After what they saw, Eddie and Sam meet again with sheriff Harry. Now, Chuck has also gone and Eddie thinks that maybe he tried to tricked them using some special effects, but Sam denies that theory since she knows how expensive it can get to be. The sheriff says that if they don’t have information that may support the case, there is nothing they can do but to wait for Chuck to come back. The duo meets with Cooper and he tells them to look for Arlo Hayes (Duncan Ollerenshaw) who had been abducted a few weeks ago and he might be of help to the case. Sam and Eddie arrive to a cafeteria looking for Arlo only to be met with unpleasant looks from the other customers. They finally find Arlo, but the man refuses to tell them anything alleging that he made up the whole story about his abduction just to get some attention. Angry, he leaves the place. When he is gone another man (Martin Cummins) ,who had seemed to be listening to the conversation, turns around and lets them know that the town has become protective since they are afraid to lose the reputation they have built around their wineries, so he asks them to understand why they haven´t been so welcomed there.

When the duo leaves the place, Arlo shows up out of nowhere and tell them his true experience about the abduction. He tells them where he was found when he woke up. Later that day Eddie and Sam visit the place where Arlo told him he was found and see Kay laying on the ground. There are some ashes around her and suddenly Eddie sees a tall, thin and grey figure that seems to be moving through the woods. He decides to keep said information from Sam until he finds a reasonable explanation for it. He calls Berto and asks him and Monica to do some research about it.

Back at Kay´s house, Dr. Sheldon Drake (Geoff Gustafson) confirms that she seems to be in very good health, but still they´ll be running some tests just to be sure. The woman starts to explain how she passed out, woke up in a dark room, couldn’t muster a word then she passed out again, but they have already found her. She claims to feel so well yet all of a sudden, she starts to move her toes fingers. She manages to stand up and start miraculously walking again much to everybody’s surprise.

Monica and Berto manage to talk to Josiah Carberry (Jim Byrnes), a man who has claimed he was abducted in Stillwater back in 1972. His experience was very similar to the other people and he also confirmed that he had lung cancer, but when he was returned he was completely healthy again. They show him different pictures of the “it” everybody had claimed to have seen. Monica sends the image to Eddie and he is surprised to find out that it was the same figure he saw. Sam notices a shift on him and she manages to confess what he saw. The duo visits Arlo and ask him if he knows anything else that would help them to solve the case, but he denies it. Eddie decides they should go back to the woods and see what else they can find. As they are walking through it, they see a grey figure and then a bright light starts to shine through the trees. Eddie and Sam keep walking until they find themselves under a ray of light. Both of them wake up in a dark place and they can communicate with each other, but after a while it is just gibberish. Suddenly, they are taken again and they wake up finding themselves next to each other in the middle of the woods. They get up and start to walk and see that there are three craters nearby where it seems that something had landed before and they are all surrounded by dead birds.

Sam attempts to find a logical explanation for what it happened to them. It seems that the “aliens” had been taken only people that were sick and as far they are concerned they aren’t. Berto informs them that he has found a connection between Arlo, Kay and Chuck and that is that they got sick nearly at the same time and presenting also the same kind of symptoms and were diagnosed by the same doctor – Maria Blunt (Brenda Matthews).

The duo pays a visit to her and she explains that she threated all of them, but the cause of their disease was unknown. She also tells them that when Dr. Sheldon Drake arrived at Stillwater he bought Maria’s practice for twice it´s worth so she just sold it. Eddie asks Berto run a search on Dr. Drake´s background to see what they can find on him.

Later that day, Eddie and Sam decide to follow Dr. Drake and he leads them to an isolated place. He enters the facilities and they follow him inside and are surprised to find an alien disguise hanging in there along with some high-tech drones that are able to shed some bright lights when activated. They see Dr. Drake and the end of the room. When they are finally face to face with him, it is revealed that Chuck is laying there next to him so he explains that he has been trying to heal him and that is the reason for which he was hired.

Back in town, Wes (a man who appeared earlier on the episode and who happens to own a winery there) enters the diner only to be found with Eddie, Sam, Chuck, Key and Arlo who unmask everything he has done. It turns out that two years earlier the man used some pesticides on his winery to which Chuck, Kay and Arlo were exposed. He knew that if they find out that the cause of their diseases was the pesticide they would sue him, so he used Stillwater’s alien stories to cover up the whole incident. Wes denies everything and attempts to escape, but then he is met with Sheriff Harry who handcuffs him and takes him away.

Sam and Eddie have managed to solve another mystery and deep inside, they wish that it had been aliens they were chasing.

Please make sure to come back next Thursday and keep watching “Take Two” at 10/9c on ABC. ¡Hasta la próxima!